Biden now claims he spoke to second dead European leader in gaffe-prone campaign week

In his second blunder of the week, President Joe Biden has now claimed he spoke to another dead European politician in a campaign event speech.

The 81-year-old president appeared at a series of campaignfundraiser events in New York on Wednesday, where he declared that he had discussed the January 6 Capitol riots with Chancellor of Germany Helmut Kohl, during a G7 meeting in the UK in 2021.

“And then Helmut Kohl turned to me and said, ‘What would you say, Mr President, if you picked up the London Times and learned that a thousand people had broken down the doors of the British Parliament, killed some bobbies on the way in, to deny the prime minister to take office,”’ Mr Biden said.

He echoed the blundering story at another event the same day.

The only issue is that Kohl had already been dead for four years at that point, passing away in 2017 after retiring from active politics in 2002.

Mr Biden appears to have been trying to refer to another former chancellor of Germany, Angela Merkel, who was in office at the time back of the apparent 2021 conversation.

This isn’t the first Euro mix-up that Mr Biden has made this week, after he also made another gaffe when trying to refer to French President Emmanuel Macron – instead referring to Francois Mitterrand.

Biden and Merkel attended the G7 summit in Cornwall, UK together in 2021

Mitterrand, who was the former president of France and has been dead for almost three decades, was brought up by Mr Biden in a campaign speech on Sunday in Las Vegas during another G7 meeting anecdote from 2021.

“Mitterrand from Germany — I mean, from France — looked at me and said, ‘You know, what… why … how long you back for?” Mr Biden said.

Mr Biden’s gaffe was corrected on the official White House